The recent image processing apparatuses may be provided with the function of determining whether input image data is color or monochrome to generate a determination result, and applies image processing that is determined based on the determination result to the input image data, for example, as described in the Japanese Patent Application Publication Nos. 2007-116272, 2001-103324, 2007-028408, 2006-086629, and the Japanese Patent No. 3772610.
In one example, the image processing apparatus pre-scans the original document to determine whether the original document is color or monochrome to generate a determination result. Based on the determination result, the image processing apparatus scans the original document to generate input image data, and applies image processing determined based on the determination result to the input image data.
Since the original document is being scanned twice, the processing speed decreases by half, resulting the slower processing speed. Further, when the original document includes a plurality of pages, the determination result may not be correctly obtained for each page especially when the page of the original document is not correctly transferred to the image reading section by error.
In another example, the image processing apparatus may perform image processing to the input image data, without pre-scanning the original document. At the same time, the image processing apparatus determines whether the input image data is monochrome or color to generate a determination result. In such case, the image processing apparatus applies image processing such that the resultant image data may be used for monochrome and color, since the determination result is not ready at the time of applying image processing. For example, assuming that the processed image data is in CMYK, when the determination result indicates that the image data is to be output as monochrome, the image processing apparatus outputs the K image data. When the determination result indicates that the image data is to be output as color, the image processing apparatus outputs the CMYK image data. However, since the image processing that is applied to the image data is not determined based on the determination result indicating whether the image data is to be output as color or monochrome, the image quality of the printed image may not be sufficiently high.
Further, when the image data is applied with the image processing common for monochrome and color, the image processing apparatus may not be able to send the image data, for example, to an external device such as a personal computer that requires the RGB image data. In such case, the image processing apparatus generates a plurality of kinds of image data including the CMYK image data and the RGB image data. This may be cumbersome and requires a large amount of memory, especially when the image processing apparatus has a variety of applications.
One possible solution to the above-described problem is to store the image data in a predetermined format such as a format specific to the image processing apparatus. When the user instruction for outputting the image data is received, the image processing apparatus interprets the user instruction to determine a data format that meets the intended use of the image data.
While the above-described solution may be effective in terms of not requiring the image processing apparatus to have a large amount of memory space, the processing time that is required for interpreting and applying image processing based on the interpretation may increase. Further, when a data area subjected for output is different from a data area subjected for input, image processing determined based on the determination result which is generated at the time of inputting image data may not reflect the characteristics of the data area of the image data for output.